Illegal Immigration: U.S. Unfairly Targets Mexican Immigrants
This assignment was created by students at The City College of New York for the Freshman Inquiry Writing Seminar, Web Discourse. Students are researching a social issue in one of four large topics: Urban Life, Public Health, Immigration, and Education. This will result in a final research paper that explores both how the conversations surrounding the issue are enacted and how a CCNY student may enter that conversation in a meaningful way.
A topic that I feel very passionate about currently is illegal immigration in the U.S.- specifically immigration policies and bias within them. I am researching immigration policies throughout history, to see what has changed and what has not, and possibly why. Exploring the idea of the U.S. targeting certain immigrant groups as opposed to others, to me seems extremely interesting.
Some issues surrounding this topic are border policies- the controversy of securing the borders. Laws that are keeping immigrants out of the U.S. rather than making it easier for people to enter the country legally, and apply for citizenship. The rights of illegal immigrants in the U.S. (access to education, employment (the use of E-Verify and whether it be enforced)). I think my point could be proven by comparing the treatment and the experience of Mexican immigrants entering the United States illegally and people of other countries. The wall built separating Mexico and the U.S. is huge evidence and in my opinion serves as a sign of discrimination, something I also plan on discussing.
As I read about much it is costing to keep illegal immigrants out, from wall construction, to new technology that verifies ones citizen status, I came across the alternative being that the U.S. invest in Mexico in order to prevent illegal immigration.
My position on some of these issues is that many of the U.S. immigration policies/laws specifically unfairly target illegal Mexicans. These laws are shaped in a way that show they are not welcome in the country, this group of illegal immigrants are made inferior to the rest of American society.
Illegal immigration directly connects to the overall theme of ‘Immigration in the U.S.,’ it is a major concern and an ongoing debate currently in not only the United States, but worldwide.
Comments
Although your topic about illegal immigration is very interesting, I think your topic should be narrowed down a bit. In my opinion, you should focus more on the border policies and illegal mexican immigrant so that you will be able to analyze it carefully. Apart from that, I think that you should think about how you are going to make a point that the US law is targeted against illegal Mexican because some people may say that the law treats all illegal immigrants equally.
Posted by: Pong (Stanford University) | October 26, 2009 09:44 AM
Hi Anna,
You have quite an interesting and controversial research topic here. I was reading your post and just wanted to give some comments that might help you with your research.
Your topic seems to be focusing particularly on Mexican illegal immigrants in the US, but I'm not too sure if you are comparing the treatment of illegal immigrants coming from different countries, or if you are comparing the treatment of illegal immigrants with American citizens and permanent residents using Mexicans as a case study. It would be helpful for you to refine the scope of your research, which would make it easier for you to find sources. You could also choose to focus on a particular set of policies which you feel have the greatest impact on these immigrants, such as education and employment. For your sources, you would probably be replying on a lot of government documents and statistics.
On a side note, I was just thinking that perhaps the reason that actions taken by the US to cut down on illegal immigration from Mexico seem more harsh is because Mexico shares a land border with the US.
Posted by: Kee Wui Huang | October 26, 2009 09:51 AM
Hi Anna
I really like your topic. I would encourage you to look deeply at past immigration policies. America was a country founded by immigrants and yet today there is this double standard and discrimination that is unfair. You could very much so investigate this and talk about the changing policies. Using government texts would be very interesting to support your points also.
As far as your specifics to Mexican immigrants I like that a lot. I think as the other comments point out there are a lot of other factors you will need to account for in our research, the land border being one of them. Maybe you could look also at the separate histories of the countries to suggest why there would be changes in trends. This could strengthen your argument possibly. Maybe also discussing the treatment of Mexican immigrants you could gather some first hand testimonies to bring the paper to life.
Posted by: JD Haddon | October 28, 2009 02:54 AM